


Iron (And Other Unbreakable Things)

by Debate



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Automail, Gen, Graphic Descriptions of Surgery, Rehabilitation, lan fan is a badass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 01:54:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8426113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Debate/pseuds/Debate
Summary: Lan Fan sacrifices and survives.





	

_i_

In Xing everything is gold. Malleable and changing, warm like sunlight and slick like sweat. Xing is ancient and proud and valuable. It has traditions as old as dragons, and people with the character of Kings. It is home. She is sixteen before she ever has reason to leave. 

_ii_

In Amestris everything is iron, acrid on the tongue and sharp everywhere else. It’s molten in her pores. And she can feel it rising up from the ground, like liquid magma, screaming: run run run. Maybe she should have listened, should’ve ran sooner, but it’s too late, iron digs into her arm until it is bitten off. Tired and panting in a sewer, the world loses all veneers of shiney gold and becomes reflective slate. 

_iii_

The doctor presses a flask to her mouth, it’s cold against her chapped lips, but the alcohol inside burns all the way down her throat and rests uneasy in her gut. She squirms away from the taste but the doctor makes her take five deep gulps before he is satisfied. 

Then there is linen in her mouth and instructions to bite down and it feels like she’s being gagged and all she wants to do is spit it out. The woman soldier whispers Amestrian into her ear with the cadence of a lullaby, but Lan Fan is too muddled to understand the words. In the next moment the first incision is made on her left side, cold, sharp, precise, like putting ice water in her veins. 

Lan Fan screams. 

_iv_

She awakes dehydrated, hungry, and unbalanced. Her first thought is to acknowledge the ache that seems to stretch outward from her skin. Her second is that her own qi feels mutilated, hanging with a loose string, a broken doll. Her third is that she cannot feel the presence of either the young lord or her grandfather. When she attempts to stand up her head spins and her stomach tumbles. She topples back onto the bed, unable to catch herself with her left hand. 

She touches the bandaged stump tentatively, it is grotesque and unfamiliar, and she gasps. Consequences are never real till one can feel them. 

The room smells like cigarettes and dried ink on paper. The mattress is lumpy, yet soft. The souls that scream under the ground of this cursed country are still there, crying in their endless agony. 

Her heart aches for Xing. 

_v_

She sleeps with a blood covered bandage under her pillow. At night, in the dark, she weaves it through her fingers, clutches it to her heart, let’s her nose brush against its frayed end. She holds her lips to the first character and repeats her vow. 

In Xing, promises are largely useless. Words mean nothing if they are not preceded or succeeded by actions, but Lan Fan disregards this, whispers her promise into the dark bedroom when the pains won’t allow her to sleep. 

“I’ll get you back,” she promises to a piece of cloth, so whoever might be listening can hear, be it Knox or Mei or the damned homunculus himself. 

“I’m going to get you back,”

_vi_

The slap against her cheek is as bitter as kale leaves, but her grandfather’s words are no worse than the ones she has been repeating in her heart every night during his absence. 

When he pulls her into his arms, the tears that trail down the side of her neck are infinitely worse than any reprimands that he could deliver.

_vii_

Her mechanic smokes a pack a day, but Lan Fan has grown accustomed to the fumes. 

“You’re crazy if you think you can finish the rehabilitation in a year,” the woman says. She is not yet forty but the skin under her eyes sag, and unflattering wrinkles circle her mouth. 

“Six months,” Lan Fan repeats for the nth time. She will not be outdone by the likes of Edward Elric, not a second time. 

Her mechanic shrugs, and injects Lan Fan’s skin with another needle.

“Fine. But it’s not my problem if you die,” 

On her right side Fu grasps her hand; Lan Fan has to stop herself from breaking his fingers when the port is connected. 

_viii_

There are three silver bands the encircle the fourth finger on the left hand of her mechanic. They are the only indication that anything about the woman is polished. When she sees Lan Fan looking, she smiles cruelly. 

“My three ex-husbands,” she explains, twirling the topmost band with her thumb. Lan Fan refrains from asking if she killed them. 

When her arm is complete it shines with the same intent as the rings. 

_ix_

She begins training like a child, mediation and form. She revisits lessons from a lifetime ago, when blood had never stained her skin and it felt like the golden summer would last forever. 

She works until she vomits blood, until she collapses from exhaustion, until her entire body aches so much that it is a burden to take a breath.

And then she works harder. 

_x_

The night before their planned departure Fu kisses both her cheeks. 

“I would bless you with strength but you have more than I, granddaughter,” he says, and traces the Yin on her forehead with his fingernail. 

“Use it.”

**Author's Note:**

> I just really love Lan Fan and I don't think people write about her enough, I'd love to hear what you think!


End file.
